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MAJOR JOHN ANDRE 



AS A 



PRISONER OF WAR 



AT 



LANCASTER, PA., 1775-6 



WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A HISTORIC HOUSE AND FAMILY 



A SKEi iiV 

W. D. HENSEL 



Read Befohe Donegal Chapter, Daughi 'rs of the Amekican Revolution, 
Lancaster, Pa., on Apri;. 13, 1904 



REPRINTED FROM THE NEW ERA 
LANCASTER, PA. 




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MAJOR JOHN ANDRE 



AS A 



PRISONER OE WAR 



AT 



LANCASTER, PA., 1775-(> 



WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A HISTORIC HOUSE AND FAMILY 



A SKETCH BY 

W. U. HENSEL 



Read Before Donegal Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 
Lancaster, Pa., on April 13, 1904 



REPRINTED FROM THE NEW ERA 
LANCASTER, PA. 



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Major John Andre's Residence 
in Lancaster. 



In a notable passage of one of the 
finest outbursts of modern oratory, a 
great man, on a great occasion, stand- 
ing in a great place, suggested that 
while it recked little what he and his 
colleagues said, where they then stood, 
the world could never forget what had 
been done there. This linking of event 
with locality is one of the fine traits 
of human thought. Nothing has con- 
tributed more to history in its best 
and broadest significance than the 
reverent tendency to associate the 
thing done with the place where It 
happened. Hawthorne somewhere 
points out that it is not only the 
physical perfection of the English 
landscape "rolled and combed," fin- 
ished "with a pencil rather than a 
plow," but the wealth of its historical 
and personal associations that so 
charms the tourist on that sacred soil. 
In fact, very much of the pleasure, if 
not the profit, of travel lies in the con- 
stant suggestiveness of historical as- 
sociation; and over and over again 
places in themselves altogether com- 
mon, if not mean, take on a signifi- 
cance and importance that challenge 
the interest and charm the memory of 
the beholder because of the deeds long 
done or the persons long dead with 
which or with whom they are somehow 
related. 

Wandering one day through West- 
minster Abbey, that Valhalla of the 
English-speaking people, which for 
six hundred years has enshrined fhe 
bones and perpetuated the memory of 
illustrious men and women of our 
race, I had passed St. Edward's shrine 
and the tomb of Henry III., and that 
sacred chair "where kings and queens 
are crowned;" I had laid one hand 
upon the tomb of Queen Elizabeth — 



(4) 

patron of Spenser and Shakespeare — 
and one upon that of her royal victim, 
martyr or traitress, as you choose, 
Mary Queen of Scots; I had stood on* 
foot upon the grave of Herschel and 
one on Darwin's, and had seen how 
a tear, dropped upon the tomb of Fox, 
"trickled to the bier" of his great 
rival, Pitt; I had heard in the "poet's 
corner" whispering echoes of Words- 
worth, Tennyson and Browning — if 
notof Lord Byron — when my attention 
was arrested by the proud memorial 
raised within those venerable walls to 
a boy, who, for a brief period of our 
Revolutionary history, was a resident, 
if not a citizen, of Lancaster and dwelt 
across the street from my own home. 

In an Illustrious Group. 

I forgot for a time the monarchs and 
statesmen, soldiers and seamen, seers 
and sages, poets and philosophers, 
whose tombs and tablets mark that 
shrine; and my mind ran back to a 
modest mansion on the east side of 
North Lime street, midway between 
East King and Orange. The tomb 
that had arrested my attention was 
designed by Robert Adam, a famous 
architect of his day; and it was 
wrought in exquisite statuary marble 
by Van Gelder. It is comprised with- 
in one of the many groups of na- 
tional memorials; all about it are un- 
inhabited monuments — as it was once 
— which Addison says "have been 
erected to the memory of persons 
whose bodies were perhaps buried on 
the plains of Blenheim, or in the 
bosom of the ocean." There lies 
Beauclerk, royal scion of Nell Gwynn, 
who fought, with both legs shot off, 
at Coca-Chica, and, 

"Dying, heard Brittania's thunder roar. 
And Spain still felt him when he 
breathed no more." 

Here is that old sea lion — Sir John 
Balchen — who, fighting for England's 
supremacy on the wave from the age 
of fifteen to seventy-four, went down 
to death and up to glory in a wreck 
on "the Casket Rocks," where eleven 
hundred souls perished "in the sad 



(5) 

sequel to his noble career." On one 
hand are the tablets of those who 
fleshed their maiden swords under 
Marlborough and Argyll on the plains 
of Flanders; and, on the other, the 
tombs of jaunty cavaliers who fell in 
the second Jacobite rebellion when 
the Highlands of Scotland burst into 
a flame of loyalty for Charles Edward, 
the Young Pretender. "Wolfe's huge 
cenotaph recalls glorious death on 
the Heights of Abraham, sealing the 
victory which established English 
domination in this western world; 
and, in a vault nearby, is the coffin of 
Admiral Charles Saunders — name now 
almost forgotten — who bore scarcely 
a second part in the great Canadian 
Conquest, and whose merit, Pitt said 
in Parliament, "equalled that of those 
who had beaten Armadas." Not far 
from Burgoyne, to whom the Colonies 
largely owe British collapse, nor from 
Enoch Markham, who bravely upbore 
a distinguished name throughout all 
England's struggle, is the tomb before 
which I left you standing to make 
this digression. Even in this com- 
pany and among these memorials 
neither the marble nor its subject is 
inconspicuous. Elevated upon a 
pedestal is a sarcophagus surmounted 
by a reclining figure of Brittania, 
leaning upon the national shield, 
lamenting the loss of an officer whom, 
his panegyrist said, "fell more uni- 
versally lamented by adversaries and 
by friends than any figure in ancient 
or modern history" — ^"an irrefragable 
proof of unsullied honor and superior 
merit." At the foot of the female 
figure the British lion seems to mourn 
the untimely death of the hero. Upon 
the panel is engraved this inscription: 

Sacred to the memory 

of 

MAJOR JOHN ANDRE, 

Who, raised by his Merit, at an early 

Period of his Life, to the Rank of 
ADJUTANT-GENERAL OF THE 

BRITISH FORCES IN AMERICA, 

and, employed in an important but 

hazardous Enterprise, fell a 

sacrifice to his 



(6) 

Zeal for his King and Country, 

on the 2d of October, 1780, aged 29. 

universally beloved and esteemed 

by the Army in which he 

served, and lamented even 

by his Foes. 

His gracious Sovereign, 

King George III., 

has caused this Monument to be 

erected. 

With his life and tragic end history 
and romance have been busy. Even 
if it were contended that his career and 
talents were only of an average order 
— and that his death was deservedly 
ignoble — those who might have become 
interested in him have had the proud 
satisfaction of knowing that, apart 
from a few great names on either side 
of the Revolutionary War, none has 
been gilded with more lustre than that 
of John Andre, who lived as a gallant 
and soldier, and who died as a spy. 

Were I even disposed, as I surely 
am not, to resent his fate, this were 
not the occasion to question the jus- 
tice of the judgment that sent him to 
the gallows. Mine is the simple task 
to awaken and refresh — by striking a 
single chord — some of the memories of 
our local history that take deep root 
in the Revolutionary period; and to 
point out some remarkable coinci- 
dences arising from the circumstance 
that Andre resided for a time as a 
paroled prisoner of war in the Town 
of Lancaster. 

Some Local History— 1744-1765. 

You must indulge me in another 
digression if I recall the fact, too often 
overlooked, of the relative im- 
portance of this city at that time. In 
the realm of the blind it has been 
facetiously said "the one-eyed man is 
king;" and may we not unblushingly 
recall that when there was no "Har- 
risburg, Altoona, Pittsburg and the 
West," there was already here a proud 
shire-town, destined to be for a time 
the capital of the State and of the 
nation, and, when they had passed 
hence, never to forget its ancient and 
honorable eminence. 



(7) 

If you will carefully read an account 
of that Treaty of the Six Nations, by 
far the most interesting, and certainly 
among the most important, ever con- 
cluded on Pennsylvania soil, which 
was held here as early as June, 1744, 
you will realize, even one hundred and 
sixty years after the event, the geo- 
graphical, ethnological and political 
importance of a place that, scaixely 
then fifteen years old, invited the as- 
semblage of red men and white, chiefs 
of savage tribes and Governors of 
settled States, in peaceful concourse 
to settle not only the disputes of 
centuries between contending bands of 
aborigines, the Delawares and Min- 
quas, the Susquehannocks and Mo- 
hawks, but also the conquest rights 
of embryonic Commonwealths. In 
journeying hither from Maryland 
Whitman Marshe's way led through 
Quaker settlements in Chester county, 
but he soon joined the Commissioners 
of his State and journeyed hither, 
maybe by the Buck, the Valley and 
Willow Street to Lancaster. That the 
traveler of that time fared scarcely 
less worthily than those who picnic by 
the wayside in these later days, we 
may gather from his diary, wherein 
Marshe narrates that "good neat's 
tongue, cold ham and Madeira wine" 
broke their fast at noonday. That 
our county was then as now the 
garden spot is attested by his record 
that here, in Pequea, Manor and the 
Lampeters, "are large and fine farms 
settled by the Germans. They sow all 
kinds of grain and have very plenty 
harvests. Their houses are chiefly 
built of stone and generally seated 
near some brook or stream of water. 
They have very large meadows, which 
produce a great deal of hay and feed 
therewith a variety of cattle." 

Albeit he was not so well impressed 
with the city, or its inhabitants, whom 
he describes as "chiefly High Dutch, 
Scotch-Irish, some few English fami- 
lies and unbelieving Israelites, who 
dealt very considerably in this 
place." These Southern gentlemen 
stopped at the Cross Keys, on West 



(8) 

King street, kept by Peter Worral, a 
thrifty Quaker, who had succeeded to 
Samuel Bethel's trade and tavern by 
marrying his buxom widow in 1740. 

The First Court House. 

Thirty years before the event to 
which I shall shortly draw your notice 
this chronicler narrates that there 
stood in the Centre Square of old 
Lancaster a Court House, built of 
brick, two stories high, with a hand- 
some bench and a chair "filled," he 
says, by the Judge, leaving us in some 
doubt, however, as to whether the 
seat was scant or the justice portly. 
Around the half oval table below the 
Bench sat the clerk and counsel; and 
fronting them all were raised steps or 
stairs where eight hundred auditors 
and spectators could stand without 
crowding. The space overhead was 
mostly in one large room, with a 
spacious chimney place, and here the 
Court was held in cold weather, and 
public functions at all seasons. Ad- 
joining it was a smaller chamber, 
where juries were penned until they 
agreed, without food or candles; and 
from the cupola on top of the building, 
Marshe declares, one could see for 
miles around, including vistas of the 
Susquehanna river — which last 1 do 
not ask you to believe, because they 
are not now in sight even from the 
far loftier summits of the Woolworth 
structure. 

It was in this Court House that Rev. 
Craddock preached and conducted 
divine services according to the Church 
of England on Sunday, June 24, 1744. 
It is gravely recorded that "he preached 
a very good sermon, which met the ap- 
probation of the several gentlemen 
present" — then, as now, presumably, 
the male sex iDeing the sole judge of 
the quality of sermons. Between one 
and two o'clock of that day the Com- 
missioners of Maryland and Virginia 
dined in the Court House, while the 
Governor of Pennsylvania, then George 
Thomas, gave the preacher a hearty 
welcome and good dinner, and in the 
afternoon, the office of the day was 



(9) 

again performed by another minister 
of the established church. Notwith- 
standing two sermons in one day the 
traditional good cheer and hospitality 
of Lancaster seemed to date quite as 
far back as this period. "Pleasant 
company, good wine and lime punch" 
were manifestly not then considered 
"vices;" and while Commissioners and 
Indians, then seriously engaged in 
treaty making, were "sober" men and 
even at times "refused drinking in a 
moderate way" and prudently took 
"great care to abstain from that in- 
toxicating drink from fear of being 
overreached," when they had finished 
their business some of them did "drink 
without measure," and nobody ap- 
peared to have been scandalized. 

Entertaining the Big Chiefs. 

When the visitors came to be enter- 
tained with a grand ball in the Court 
House, and James Hamilton, the pro- 
prietor, danced the minuet to "wilder 
music" than even the Indians made; 
and the Jewesses, "not long since come 
from New York," "made a tolerable ap- 
pearance" and the "large and elegant 
supper" was served in such manner 
"that the female dancers first ate," I 
can well understand why my chronicler 
and informant, with several others of 
the younger sort, stayed until after one 
in the morning. So it happens that we 
never grow old, and the boy is forever 
father to the man. 

I should delight to take you with me 
through those days of treaty-making, 
more than a century and a-half ago, to 
depict to you Jennings making his 
speech and giving his belts of wam- 
pum to the Cannasategos, their 
"johas" and "wohs" quite as forcible 
and significant, I doubt not, as the 
college yells of to-day; to bid you to 
that great dinner given in the Court 
House by the Maryland Commissioners, 
when twenty-five chiefs of the Six Na- 
tions were entertained, and, with a cir- 
cumspection that the Clover Club, the 
Five O'clockers, or the Fellowship 
might well emulate, Mr. Thomas Cook- 
son, Prothonotary of Lancaster county. 



(10) 

Wm. Logan and Nathaniel Kigbie, of 
Maryland, "carved the meat for them, 
served them with cider and wine, 
mixed with ivater, and regulated the 
economy of the two tables. The chiefs 
seemed prodigiously pleased with their 
feast, for they fed lustily, drank 
heartily, and were very greasy before 
they finished their dinner, for. by-the- 
bye, they made no use of their forks. 
The interpreter, Mr. Weiser, stood be- 
twixt the tables, where the Governor 
sat, and that at which the sachems 
were placed, who, by order of his 
Honour, was desired to inform the In- 
dians he drank their healths, which he 
did; whereupon they gave the usual 
cry of approbation, and returned the 
compliment by drinking health to his 
Honour and the several Commis- 
sioners." 

All of this, however interesting as it 
is in itself,is quite outside my immediate 
subject and only collateral and inci- 
dental — or rather antecedent — to the 
main purpose of this narration, and 
must, therefore, for the time be dis- 
missed from further consideration. If 
Lancaster during the next twenty 
years made no great strides, it at least 
presented such a respectable presence 
to an intelligent stranger that Major 
Robert Rogers, in his concise account 
of North America, 1765, the most in- 
teresting description of English pos- 
sessions in America up to that time, 
declares that Lancaster, sixty miles 
from Philadelphia, on the way to Fort 
Duquesne, was "near as large as the 
City of New York." 

A Lancastrian at Quebec. 

The first historical coincidence of 
local note to which I shall ask your 
attention is that about the time emo- 
tions were stirring in the breast of 
John Andre which impelled him to 
seek fame, if not fortune, in the New 
World, and unconsciously to start for 
Lancaster, by way of Canada, the love 
of venture in a young Lancastrian 
prompted him to start from Lancaster, 
by way of Benedict Arnold's desperate 
and romantic Canadian campaign, for 



(11) 

Quebec. No page of all our Revolu- 
tionary history is more astir with vivid 
heroism than that which records the 
joint campaigns of Arnold and Mont- 
gomery against the strongholds of Brit- 
ish power in the North. If it was rele- 
vant to this occasion, and, if time per- 
mitted, I should delight to recount the 
gallantry and romantic adventure and 
the thrilling heroism of both those ex- 
peditions. It is of notable local interest 
that no more vivid narrative of the 
Arnold march has ever been written 
than that which John Joseph Henry, of 
Lancaster, dictated to his daughter, 
Ann Mary, and which his widow gave 
to the press in 1812, without even the 
correction of verbal and typographical 
errors. At the age of fourteen he was 
taken from Lancaster by his uncle, a 
gunsmith, to Detroit, and he returned 
to this city on foot, with a single guide, 
who died in the intervening wilderness. 
It was this experience, no doubt, which 
inspired him to clandestinely join the 
Arnold expedition when he was only 
seventeen years old. It was not his 
fortune to directly encounter Andre, 
who was delivered into the hands of 
the Americans upon the surrender of 
St. John's to Montgomery. But the 
coincidence is scarcely less remarkable 
that he should have been proceeding 
on his way to, and actively and gal- 
lantly participating in, the campaign 
against Quebec, under the command of 
Benedict Arnold, while Montgomery, 
proceeding toward the same objective 
point, was accompanied by Aaron Burr 
as a camp follower, with the Indian 
girl, whom he picked up by the way, 
and her dog. 

Thus at the very outset of the story 
there appears an inter-relation of pic- 
turesque personal events that can 
hardly fail to arouse the sentiment of 
the romancer and historian. 

Andre and His Honora. 

Let me now start at the other end 
of the line. Though born in London, 
John Andre was of French extraction, 
as his name so readily suggests. He 
originally projected a mercantile rather 



LofC. 



(12) 

than a military career. In my inquiry 
into his family relations when he was 
scarcely eighteen years of age, I find 
no trace of his father, nor of the 
younger brother upon whom there 
seems to have been conferred high 
honors by the British Government. In 
his letters to Anna Seward, who, after 
the fashion of that gay Eighteenth 
Century, he addresses as "Dear Julia," 
he recalls his mother and three sisters, 
and her "Monody" on his death refers 
to them as Maria, Anna and Louisa. 
Throughout this fervid correspondence 
he tells, with boyish frankness, to the 
mutual friend of himself and the object 
of his adoration, of the joy that danced 
in his beloved's eyes when she first 
showed him the three spires of Litch- 
field, which she called the "Ladies of 
the Valley," well deserving the title by 
their lightness and elegance. "How I 
loved them," he says, from the instant 
"she had named them." That his family 
fortunes were not abundant may be in- 
ferred from his allusions to their old 
coach, drawn by "two long-tailed nags." 
The poverty of his condition is as 
frankly avowed as the hopelessness of 
his affection. In one letter he writes: 
"My zephyrs are wafted through cracks 
in the wainscott; for murmuring 
streams I have dirty kennels; for bleat- 
ing flocks, grunting pigs; and squall- 
ing cats for birds that incessantly 
warble." For the sake of his mistress, 
however, he was evidently content to 
sink his artistic and literary aspira- 
tions, for as late as November 1, 1769, 
he wrote: "I have now completely 
subdued my aversion to the profession 
of a merchant, and hope in time to ac- 
quire an inclination for it. Yet, God 
forbid I should ever love what I am to 
make the object of my attention! that 
vile trash, which I care not for, but 
only as it may be the future means of 
procuring the blessing of my soul. 
Thus all my mercantile calculations go 
to the tune of dear Honora. When 
an impertinent consciousness whispers 
in my ear, that I am not of the right 
stuff for a merchant, I draw my 
Honora's picture from my bosom, and 



(13) 

the sight of that dear Talisman so in- 
spirits my industry, that no toil ap- 
pears oppressive." 

Not to dwell upon this phase of his 
career it is enough to recall that the 
fair Honora either rejected his ad- 
dresses or yielded to parental objec- 
tions even after engagement. She 
married Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 
content to be his second wife, and be- 
came stepmother to Maria Edgeworth, 
the novelist* Andre, in his disappoint- 
ment or desperation, bought an army 
commission, but that he was faithful 
for a time at least to the memory of 
his heartless Honora is shown by the 
fact that when he surrendered at St. 
John's, to Montgomery, with seven 
other officers and two hundred and 
forty-two privates of the Seventh 
Royal Fusileers, and when he was 
stripped and examined, the locket- 
miniature of the woman who had dis- 
appointed him was saved from his cap- 
tors by himself hiding it in his mouth. 
It was of his own painting. By the 
way, she died of consumption four /i^' 
years before him and while he was a 
prisoner of war. That she was by no 
means a commonplace woman I gather 
from this fact: In 1781 William Hay- 
ley wrote his poem, "The Triumphs of 
Temper." It exhausted seven editions 
at least. The impression of 1793 is 
in my hand. Thin and dreary the verse 
appears at this day, and if anybody 
could be found to read such poetry 
every real literary centre from Quar- 
ry ville, Pa., to East Aurora, N. Y., 
could easily furnish mechanics to write 



*When Edgeworth's matrimonial ex- 
perience is recalled it is little wonder 
he proved a successful rival to Andre; 
for he was married four times — never 
a widower more than eight months — 
and he became father of twenty-one 
children. Maria was his second child, 
the eldest daughter of his first wife. 
It is said he was worshipping at 
Honora Sneyd's shrine when he re- 
ceived the not unwelcome news of his 
wife's death; and within four months 
Miss Sneyd became the step-mother of 
his children. Before she died she 
designated her own sister, Elizabeth, as 
her successor, and eight months later 
the aunt of her children became their 
step-mother. 



(14) 

it. And yet this slender volume which 
I submit to your inspection* is of 
more market value than the whole of 
some very respectable private libraries 
in Lancaster, only because the fanciful 
engraving of its mythical "Serena" on 
page 5 is a portrait of "Honora Sneyd," 
the fiance of John Andre. I dolefully 
confess my own previous ignorance of 
Hayley, or his ways and works, but 
the ever helpful encyclopaedia tells me 
he was educated at Eton and Cam- 
bridge and studied law; being rich, 
however, he wisely practiced literature 
and courted the muses. I am re-in- 
forced in the conviction that he must 
have had some special interest in 
Andre's friends, if not in the lad him- 
self, by the fact that in this other pre- 
cious — if not priceless — volume which 
I now hold before youf he appears with 
some (of course) "impromptu" lines 
sandwiched between Anna Seward's 
"religious enthusiasm" for "a mur- 
dered saint" and her hysterical poetic 
outburst to Andre and all his family. 
This other volume, not utterly beyond 
the reach of a private purse, has also 
great market if not literary, value, be- 
cause its engraving of Andre, from his 
own portrait of himself, has furnished 
the model from which all others are 
drawn or reproduced. 

Major Andre a Prisoner of War. 

Transported from Canada to Con- 
necticut, and thence to Lancaster, we 
must believe that he and his comrades 
and the sixty or more women and chil- 
dren who were brought as prisoners of 
war to this town, in December, 1775, 
came by way of Philadelphia and were 
marched up the King's Highway, past 
the Compass, White Horse, the Hat 
Tavern and what is now Bird-in-Hand. 



*"The Triumphs of Temper; a Poem 
in Six Cantos, by Wm. Hayley, Esq. 
The Seventh edition, corrected, London. 
Printed for T. Cadel, in The Strand, 
MDCCXIII." Loaned me for the occa- 
sion by Capt. J. E. Barr. 

t"An authentic narrative of The 
Causes which led to the death of Major 
John Andre, Adjutant General of His 
Majesty's Forces in North America," 
by Joshua Hett Smith. London, 1808. 




THE COPE HOUSE. 

MAJOR ANDRE'S HOME WHILE IN LANCASTER. 



(15) 

Whether he was confined for any time 
in the old Saw-Buck House, on Middle 
street, originally erected in 1759 as a 
barracks for John Forbes' troops on 
their return from Fort Pitt, or not, is 
not essentially material to this nar- 
rative. For he very early signed a 
parole, drawn by Jasper Yeates, the 
original now in possession of Simon 
Gratz, of Philadelphia, which read as 
follows: 

"I, John Andre, being a prisoner in 
the United Colonies of America, do, 
upon the honor of a gentleman.promise 
that I will not go into or near any 
seaport town, nor farther than six 
miles distant from Lancaster without 
leave of the Continental Congress or 
the Committee of Safety of Pennsyl- 
vania, and that I will carry on no po- 
litical correspondence whatever on the 
subject of the dispute between Great 
Britain and the Colonies so long as I 
remain a prisoner." 

Upon these conditions he became an 
inmate of the house of Caleb Cope, the 
identical structure recently made 
vacant by the death of the venerable 
Eliza E. Smith, after more than a half 
century's residence therein.l If, as you 
saunter home this April afternoon, you 
will take a look at the gable end of 
that house, on the north side of Grant 
street, just off Lime, you will find cut 
into the bricks, about knee-high to a 
man, the initials of the boys who 
played marbles in that alley during the 
Revolution. Besides others of later 
date and less distinct you will readily 
see: 

T. T.— 178 . 

W. M.— 1784. 

T. P. C— 1782. 
This last inscription was undoubt- 
edly the work of Thomas P. Cope, son 
of Caleb Cope, who occupied the house 
during that period. Tom likely cut it 
with a knife or scratched it with a nail 
there more than one hundred and 
twenty years ago. His father, the elder 
Cope, was then a man in the prime of 

tHon. A. Herr Smith took title to it 
about April 12, 1851; and at his death 
nis sister inherited it. 



(16) 

life, having been born in Chester 
county in 1736; he removed to this 
city in its youth, to practice the pro- 
fession of surveyor, became Borough 
Regulator, and was Burgess about the 
time of the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion. His principles made him a non- 
resistant, and the patriotic public re- 
garded him as a Tory. But he outlived 
this reputation and long before he re- 
moved with his family to Philadelphia 
— where he died nearly fifty years after 
Independence was achieved — he had 
regained the entire respect of his fel- 
low citizens. His son, Thomas P. Cope, 
became a leading citizen and merchant 
of Philadelphia, one of the chief pat- 
rons and early Presidents of the Mer- 
cantile Library Association, and his 
portrait— as well as a bronze relief — 
now hangs above the central desk of 
the librarian of that institution, in its 
building, on Tenth, above Chestnut 
street. I raised my eyes from a book 
there the other day, and thought it a 
queer coincidence that the first thing 
they met was that keen, sharp, fresh- 
complexioned, bespectacled Quaker 
face; the figure dressed in snuff-colored 
raiment, with the name inscribed on 
the frame of the picture— of the same 
initials as on the bricks of the old 
house in Lime street. 

For I had been conning over that 
rare and interesting collection of 
American antiquities by John Jay 
Smith, which is kept under lock and 
key. One of its most interesting fea- 
tures is the Cope-Andre literature and 
its illustrations. 

Lancaster In the Revolution. 

Lancaster, by the way, was a noted 
station for the lodging of prisoners of 
war, being convenient to the Capitals, 
and yet, like York, Carlisle and Read- 
ing, a frontier town, not so close to 
the' scene of military operations as to 
be considered unsafe for the detention 
of military prisoners. At one time, in 
1777, when as many as 2,000 were gath- 
ered here, and the farmers were busy 
harvesting their crops, and the non- 
resistants were numerous and a power- 



(17) 

ful sentiment of loyalty to the crown 
pervaded the community, grave appre- 
hensions were felt of danger from a 
possible outbreak, not unsupported by 
assurances of local aid. fl never came, 
however. Poorly enough off the pris- 
oners were sometimes. The privates 
came here sorely lacking breeches, 
shoes and stockings; the Government 
agent one day cut off the rations from 
the women and children, and when he 
would not give them bread or meat 
they appealed — never in vain — to that 
bluff patriot, Matthias Slough, for re- 
lief from starvation. The men were 
kept at the barracks, surrounded by a 
stockade; and the British officers 
lodged at public or private houses. 

Andre not only found shelter under 
the roof of Cope, but had congenial as- 
sociations with his family. That it was 
not a popular thing for the Quaker to 
give even this semblance of aid and 
comfort to the enemy, may be judged 
from the fact that the mob smashed all 
the windows out of the Cope mansion. 
The citizens who had tolerated, if not 
encouraged, such demonstration, re- 
deemed themselves somewhat.however, 
by afterwards liberally assisting Cope 
to reconstruct his house when it had 
been accidentally damaged by fire. 

Beside Andre there lodged with Cope 
a British officer prisoner, Lieutenant 
Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, Irish 
by birth, whose fate was somewhat co- 
incident with that of Andre. Being ex- 
changed, he returned to the army and 
served in the Revolutionary War until 
1779, when he was transferred to 
Jamaica. Despard aided in wresting 
some possessions on the Mosquito 
coast from Spain and was invested with 
considerable executive power in Hon- 
duras. He seems to have exercised it 
in such a manner as to create popular 
dissatisfaction, and in 1790 was re- 
called to England. He demanded ex- 
amination and preferred some claim 
against the Government. It was not 
heeded; he became seditious, was ar- 
rested and released, and in his frenzy 
of rage and disappointment he headed 
a mad conspiracy to murder his King 



(18) 

and seize the bank, the tower and the 
Government. WitE nine of his crazy 
associates he perished on the scaffold 
in 1803. BYom what Cope had seen of 
his disposition while he lodged in Lan- 
caster, he had predicted for Despard 
some dire fate, as the result of his im- 
petuous, unconciliating temper. But 
Caleb Cope and none of his family who 
so loved the gentle, accomplished and 
genial Andre, ever anticipated that he 
would perish by the ignominious,unsol- 
dierly death to which in after years 
his Lancaster host could never refer 
without an outburst of tears. 

Artist and Gentleman. 

Andre seems to have been a young 
man of rare talent, personal accom- 
plishments and graces of manner. In 
the volume of Smith, to whom refer- 
ence has been made, there is repro- 
duced and preserved, in colored litho- 
graph, a very dainty sketch which 
Andre made for the Copes of an old 
place, probably his homestead, in Eng- 
land. The picture was saved by the 
elder Cope, "in memory of the artist, 
and of my affection for that gifted and 
deceived, that noble-minded and gener- 
ous man." And in furnishing this 
plate for Mr. Smith's collection, Mr. 
Thomas P. Cope writes of his recol- 
lections of Andre, at his father's house 
in Lancaster: "I was at that time a 
small boy, but well remember Andre's 
bland manners, sporting with us chil- 
dren as one of us, more particularly at- 
tached to John." "We often played 
marbles and other boyish games with 
him." It is easy to believe that when 
the Lancaster lads on Lime street, a 
century ago, cut their names into the 
bricks they recalled the story of their 
playmate of a few years earlier and his 
tragic fate then so recent. 

Young John Cope received every en- 
couragement and instruction from An- 
dre in the art of painting, for which 
he showed great fondness and in which 
Andre was no mere dabster. Dr. 
Benjamin T. Barton, too, who became 
a famous draughtsman, got his first 
inspiration from the British prisoner 
of war in Lancaster. 



(19) 

Caleb Cope had five sons. Besides 
John, then aged thirteen, there were 
Thomas P., Israel, Jasper and William, 
and it is Herman, the son of Jasper, 
who, when I last knew, owned the 
originals of the letters and pictures 
upon which this sketch is based. If 
the journey by which Andre was 
brought a prisoner of war, from the 
time of his capture, November 3, 1775, 
to Lancaster, occupied, as I think it 
did, more than a month, he remained 
in this city and at Cope's house about 
four months in all. During that 
period there are meagre records 
of his movements and doings,* but it 
can easily be surmised that to one of 
his ardent temperament, fascinating 
personality and rare social accomplish- 
ments, confined by a tether of six 
miles, semi-captivity could not have 
withheld him from mingling freely 
with the people of this town. 

This appears more probable when it 
is remembered that in this, as in all 
other communities of English origin, 
certainly at that early period of the 
Revolutionary struggle, loyalists were 
not infrequently to be found among 
the people of highest worth and stand- 
ing. It would be a great mistake for 
even Daughters-in-Law of the Revolu- 
tion, surcharged with patriotic rever- 
ence, to under-estimate the consider- 
ations which kept many of the 
worthiest people of that day from 



*A careful examination of "Major 
Andre's Journal," 1777-78, published in 
a very limited edition by the Bibliophile 
Society, Boston, Mass., fails to disclose 
anything relative to Andre's sojourn in 
Lancaster. The Introduction, however, 
by Henry Cabot Lodge, on page 11,' 
has the following concerning him: 
"From Boston he made his way to 
Canada, arriving there early In 1775, 
and was taken prisoner at St. John's 
in the following autumn (when that 
place was captured by Montgomery), 
and 'stript of everything,' as he wrote, 
'except the picture of Honora, which I 
concealed in my mouth.' He remained 
a prisoner at Lancaster, Pa., where it is 
to he feared he was not over well treated, 
until the year 1776, when he was ex- 
changed." The italics are mine; the 
statement of the distinguished his- 
torian is inaccurate in two of its par- 
ticulars. W. U. H. 



(20) 

sympathizing with the incipient and 
somewhat turbulent Revolution. The 
clergy of the established church, 
landowners and substantial business 
men, the aristocracy of culture, of 
dignified professions and callings, of 
oflicial rank and hereditary wealth, 
were in a large measure found in the 
Tory party, I can easily believe that 
on the Lord's day Major Andre, cut- 
ting across lots, to attend St. James' 
Church, heard from the eloquent and 
distinguished Thomas Barton, not only 
fervid prayers for the King and royal 
family, but sermon sentiments not un- 
welcome to the ears of a British army 
officer. And although that same Bar- 
ton was obliged toshut up his churches 
to avoid the fury of the populace, who 
would not suffer his liturgy to be 
used, he had the high heroism of con- 
science which bore the separation of 
a father from his family and a preacher 
from his congregation, rather than, 
as he saw it, degrade his profession by 
intermeddling in what he deemed an 
unhappy political contest. Nor does 
it require much stretch of imagination 
to fancy that on some of those milder 
March days, when he played marblos 
and other boyish games with the Cope 
boys, young Bob Fulton, then a lad 
attending, or rather playing truant 
from, Caleb Johnson's Quaker school, 
in Lancaster, might occasionally have 
stopped to take a hand in the sports 
which went bravely on in that alley. 
Why may not Andre and his friends, 
the Cope boys, have gone with Fulton 
in the early spring days out to the 
Conestoga, where old Deter Gumpf 
had a small flat boat padlocked to the 
trunk of a tree, near Rockford, with 
which he was wont to take all of the 
Lancaster bo^"s fishing. 

Removed to Carlisle. 

The removal of the prisoners from 
Lancaster to Carlisle was largely due 
to consideration for their own safety. 
For by the spring of 1776 public senti- 
ment in Lancaster, agitated by Court 
House meetings, inspired by men like 
Edward Shippen, William Atlee, Wil- 



(21) 

liam Bausman and Adam Reigart, 
was making it difficult to withhold not 
only popular indignation, but personal 
violence against British officers at 
large upon the streets of Lancaster, 
and somewhat feted by a considerable 
number of its more prominent people. 
When this sentiment became so strong 
that a shopkeeper, who had sold tea 
in prohibition of popular resolution, 
was compelled to make abject apology, 
we can well understand what Andre 
meant when, writing from Carlisle on 
April 3, 1776, he said: "The people 
here are no more willing to harbor us 
than those of Lancaster were at our 
first coming there." He expresses 
in that letter, however, great 
anxiety to have young John 
Cope sent on to Carlisle, in 
continuation of a purpose which he 
had almost consummated in Lancas- 
ter to sell his army commission, re- 
turn to England, taking young Cope 
with him, to perfect his own art 
studies and to start his boy friend on 
a great career as a painter. That 
Andre was a man of much delicacy 
and refinement.and without coarseness, 
appears from this nice reference: "I 
had hoped I could," referring to the 
Cope lad coming on to Carlisle, "have 
him with me in some quiet, honest 
family of friends, or others, where he 
might have board, as it would not 
have been proper for him to live with 
a mess of officers. I have been able 
to find neither,and am myself still in a 
tavern. If you resolve to let him come 
Despard and I can make up a bed in 
a lodging we have in view, where 
there will be room enough. He will 
be the greatest part of the day with 
us, or employed in the few things I 
am able to interest him in. In the 
meanwhile, I may get better acquaint- 
ed with the town and provide for his 
board. With regard to expenses, this 
is to be attended with none to you. 
A little assiduity and friendship is all 
I ask from my young friend in return 
for my good will to be of service to 
him and my wishes to put him in the 
way of improving the talents God hath 



(22) 

given him. I shall give all my atten- 
tion to his morals, and, as I believe 
him well disposed, I trust he will ac- 
quire no bad habits here." In that let- 
ter, and in every other which I have 
had the privilege to read, he is alike 
polite and grateful in his remem- 
brance to all of Mr. Cope's family, and 
his comrade, Despard, who all the 
while remained with him, constantly 
joins in these regards. 

The Cope-Andre Correspondence. 

That the causes which prevented 
young Cope from joining him did not 
slacken his interest in the boy's aspi- 
rations is again witnessed by a letter 
of September 2, 1776, in which he not 
only thanks Cope for his kind letter, 
but for the drawing sent by the son. 
He congratulates him on the great im- 
provement in his skill, and predicts 
for him "very great progress." Upon 
the whole he is glad that he had not 
come to Carlisle, for, he says: "We 
have been submitted to alarms and 
jealousy, which would have rendered 
his stay here very disagreeable to him, 
and I would not willingly see any per- 
son suffer on our account." He sends 
renewed regards to "your son, my dis- 
ciple, to whom I hope the future pos- 
ture of affairs will give me an oppor- 
tunity of pointing out the way to pro- 
ficiency in his favorite study, which 
may tend so much to his pleasure and 
advantage. Let him go on copying 
whatever good models he can meet 
with, and never suffer himself to ne- 
glect the proportions, and never to 
think of finishing his work or omit- 
ting the fine flowing lines of his copy 
until every limb, feature, house, tree, 
or whatever he is drawing, is in its 
proper place. With a little practice 
this will be so natural to him that his 
eye will at first sight guide his pencil 
in the exact distribution of every part 
of his work. I wish I may soon see 
you on our way to our own friends, 
with whom I hope, by exchange, we 
may at length be re-united." 

The next letter of this interesting 
series is without date. That all com- 
munication at that time was accom- 



(23) 

panied with diflBculties appears from 
a sort of admission that he had re- 
ceived a letter from Cope surrepti- 
tiously "by Barrington." "I am sorry," 
he says, "you should imagine my be- 
ing absent from Lancaster, or our 
troubles should make me forget my 
friends there." Of several letters sent 
from Cope, only one had reached him, 
and, by way of explanation, he adds: 
"I own the difficulties of our corre- 
spondence had disgusted me from at- 
tempting to write." Sometime before 
October 11, the date of his 
next letter, he had received 
a letter "by Mrs. Callender," 
and more of young John Cope's 
drawings, which leads him to observe 
that he has much improved, and that 
his work shows he has not been idle. 
"He must take particular care in 
framing the features in faces and in 
copying hands exactly. He should 
now and then copy things from life, 
and then compare the proportions 
with what prints he may have or 
what rules he may have remembered. 
With respect to his shading with In- 
dian ink, the anatomical figure is tol- 
erably well done, but he will find his 
work smoother and safer were he to 
lay the shades on more gradually, not 
blacking the darkest at once, but by 
washing them over repeatedly, and 
never until the paper is quite dry. 
The figure is very well drawn." 

The closing paragraph of this letter 
relates to the exchange of prisoners to 
take place immediately, and the letter 
was sent by Captain Campbell, to 
whom he recommended Cope to speak 
freely, and, if there is no prospect of 
an early exchange, he wants John sent 
on to Carlisle. Despard again courte- 
ously sends his compliments, "especi- 
ally to John." Some time between the 
date of that letter and December 1, 1776, 
the long anticipated exchange had 
taken place. Meanwhile events were 
shaping themselves rapidly. The 
Declaration of Independence had been 
proclaimed while Andre was at Car- 
lisle. Moses Coit Tyler, in his invalu- 
able and comprehensive work on the 
"Literary History of the American 



(24) 

Revolution," makes the buinder of lo- 
cating Andre at Burlington, New Jer- 
sey, where, on the fourth of June, 1776, 
the British officers, prisoners of war, 
noisily celebrated the birthday of the 
English King. The subject of our 
sketch was certainly not in that party, 
for it was only on December 2, 1776, 
having left Carlisle a few days before, 
he sends to Cope, by Mr. Slough, a let- 
ter from Reading, taking leave of his 
Lancaster friends and transmitting to 
them all his sincere wishes for the 
future. Confidently he writes: "We 
are on the road to be exchanged. How- 
ever happy this prospect may make me, 
it doth not render me less warm in 
the fate of those persons in this coun- 
try for whom I had conceived a regard. 
I trust on your side you will do me the 
justice to remember me with some good 
will, and that you will be persuaded I 
shall be happy, if the occasion shall 
offer, of my giving your son some fur- 
ther hints in the art for which he has 
so happy a turn. Desire him, if you 
please, to commit my name and my 
friendship for him to his memory, and 
assure him for me that if he only 
brings diligence to his assistance 
Nature has opened to him a path to 
fortune and reputation, and that he 
may hope in a few years to enjoy the 
fruits of his labor. Perhaps the face of 
affairs may so far change that he will 
once more be within my reach, when 
it will be a very great pleasure to me 
to give him what assistance I can." 

That Andre sincerely desired to re- 
turn to England, and would have been 
quite willing to sell his army commis- 
sion and take young Cope with him to 
pursue and perfect together their art 
studies, there can be no doubt. And a 
grandson of the elder Cope has left 
on record his testimony that the young 
soldier's "offer was gratefully declined 
on conscientious grounds after the 
counsel had been sought of esteemed 
and reliable friends, a most unfortu- 
nate decision for both preceptor and 
pupil." That Andre was mindful to 
the last of his Lancaster friends and 
associations appears in a letter written 



(25) 

by him when he was Adjutant General 
of the British army, and only nine days 
before the capture which led to his ex- 
ecution. In that he said, with grim 
prophecy, "To-morrow I expect to meet 
Sir Harry Clinton and make up for lost 
time." 

Thomas P. Cope, whose initials you 
will see cut on the Grant street gable 
of the Smith house, writing, nearly 
seventy years later, says: "When 
Andre lived in my father's family I 
vvas a small boy, but well remember 
his bland manner, sporting with us 
children as one of us. To my brother, 
John, he was more especially attached, 
from a nearer approach of age and a 
congeniality of genius and taste. The 
colored drawing which is still in the 
possession of our family, made by him, 
I think represented the place of his 
birth, or some place at which he had 
resided. I have carefully treasured the 
relic in memory of the artist, that 
gifted and deceived, that noble-minded 
and generous man." This drawing is 
tinted with green. It comprises a 
church spire in the background, the 
foliage of trees surrounding a lodge or 
back-gate, and is rather sketchy and 
incomplete. 

The "Wolf Memorial" contains a 
passing reference to Andre, which fits 
exactly with the dates I have given of 
his removal from Carlisle and his route 
to Philadelphia for exchange. The 
mother of the late Barnard Wolf, Esq., 
was Anna Maria Krause, a daughter of 
Jacob Krause, who resided during the 
Revolution at a place known as 
"Crooked Hill," three and a-half miles 
from Pottstown, on the road from 
Reading. A brother of Krause's wife, 
named Henry Bering, kept the hotel 
there; he had a daughter, Kitty, to 
whom her cousin, Anna M. Krause, was 
a frequent visitor. 

■^he happened to be at Crooked Hill 
tavern in December, 1776, when Major 
Andre stopped there on his way from 
Carlisle, via Reading, to be exchanged. 
Mr. Wolf had a vivid recollection of his 
mother's description of Andre. She de- 
scribed him as "rather under the aver- 



(26) 

age stature, of a light, agile frame, 
active in his movements, and of 
sprightly conversation. He was a fine 
performer on the flute, with which he 
beguiled the hours of twilight, and was 
an excellent vocalist. Whilst at Mr. 
Bering's house. Major Andre occupied 
the most of his time in examining and 
drawing maps and charts of the coun- 
try. She bore full testimony of his 
polished manners, and the easy grace 
and charm of his conversation. His 
engaging deportment rendered him 
popular with his fellow officers. Mary 
always spoke feelingly of Major Andre, 
and, in after years, often sung his re- 
membrance, as addressed by him to his 
'Delia.' Her tender sympathies would 
have interposed, had she possessed the 
power, to save the Major from his 
ignominious and untimely death. It 
was a matter of remark that Major 
Andre did not, like the majority of his 
brother officers, indulge in vituperation 
against the colonists." 

That same Henry Bering, by the way, 
soon afterwards removed to Lancaster. 
He kept a public house, as early as 
1777, at the west end of what is now 
Witmer's Bridge; the old stone tavern, 
at the corner of Conestoga Park, having 
been destroyed by fire only a few years 
ago. Bering also managed the ferry at 
the same place; it was a great 
thoroughfare for teams and troops dur- 
ing the Revolution. In order to give 
Mrs. Krause the larger advantages, 
social and educational, then afforded by 
Lancaster, her parents were persuaded 
to let her accompany the Bering family 
to their new home, at Conestoga, 
and her reminiscences of those event- 
ful days in Lancaster, as perpetuated 
by her descendants, are of rare interest 
As in all times of war, no little de- 
moralization prevailed, and prowling 
ruffians constantly preyed upon de- 
fenceless neighbors. Wagonloads of 
American soldiers, wounded at the 
massacre of Paoli, were brought to this 
city, and the Bering house was a hos- 
pital and the Bering family nurses for 
them. A Virginia Captain, Vanhorn, 
confined there for a long time with a 



(27) 

shattered limb, was attacked by a 
marauding band of ruffians, and, to 
save liis life, leaped from a window 
and was killed by the fall. Later Mr. 
Bering became the purchaser of a large 
and desirable house in the city of Lan- 
caster, and contracted with Robert 
Morris to furnish the American army 
with cattle brought from Virginia; in 
1788 he was Burgess of the town. Many 
of the British officers brought here as 
prisoners of war were accompanied by 
their wives, and, like Andre, had parole 
privileges, with the restriction of keep- 
ing within six miles of the town. Mr. 
Derng's house was a stopping place for 
many of them, and Kitty Bering and 
Mary Krause have left lively remi- 
niscences of the amusements to which 
they resorted to make the tediousness 
of their semi-prison life tolerable. One 
of these was a series of elaborate 
dramatic representations in Mr. Ber- 
ing's brew-house. 



At this point I might, with en- 
tire propriety (and perhaps much to 
your relief), close this paper and dis- 
miss the immediate subject in hand; for 
here all relations of Andre with Lan- 
caster are severed. Though his boyish 
playmates left marks still visible on 
the walls of the mansion in which 
they and he dwelt together, any scars 
his fascinating gallantry may have 
left on the hearts of our great-grand- 
mothers were surely not indelible. His 
residence here, however, was long 
enough, and his bearing sufficiently 
agreeable, to have awakened local in- 
terest in his subsequent romantic ca- 
reer. 

In the stirring events of the war im- 
mediately preceding and following the 
Beclaration he bore no part. When 
the "Thunderbomb" was throwing 
shells into Charleston; when the dis- 
tress of the Continental army sounded 
the retreat from Canada; when Crown 
Point was abandoned by the Ameri- 
cans and Gates was beginning to show 
his disaffection toward Washington; 
when disaster and retreat from Long 
Island caused, as Bancroft says, "care 



(28) 

to sit heavily on tlie brow of the 
younger people;" when the youthful 
Nathan Hale, in all the halo of patri- 
otic martyrdom, stepped from the 
scaffold to the skies, Andre was chaf- 
ing in the remoteness, if not the soli- 
tude, of Carlisle. And when he start- 
ed down the Schuylkill Valley for ex- 
change Washington was retreating 
through the Jerseys, with Cornwallis 
in pursuit. From the time Andre re- 
joined the army until he figures in the 
glittering revels of that gay winter of 
the British in Philadelphia, and all 
during the year that saw the advance 
and capitulation of Burgoyne, the oc- 
cupation of Philadelphia, the contest 
for the Delaware river, and the win- 
ter encampment at Valley Forge, thq 
ordinary histories of that great strug- 
gle are silent as to any brilliant mil- 
itary achievement which would render 
Andre famous or commend him to pro- 
motion. 

It seems, however, that when he was 
exchanged Maj. Gen. John Grey made 
him an aide, and when Grey returned 
to Europe Andre was transferred to 
the same post in the military family 
of Sir Henry Clinton. W^hen Lord 
Rawden resigned as Adjutant General, 
Andre was only a Captain, and the 
rank of Major was necessary to qual- 
ify him for the succession. It was 
aslved by Clinton, and refused by the 
Minister of War on the ground of his 
youth. Clinton, surprised and dis- 
pleased, said he could not fix his 
choice on any other person so suitable 
for the office, and that he should con- 
tinue to employ Andre in discharging 
its duties and forbear for the present 
to make any other appointment. It 
was then the rank of Major was con- 
ferred, and three weeks preceding his 
capture he was formally commis- 
sioned; although he had for nearly a 
year filled the oflBce, the commission 
had not arrived when he met his 
death. 

A Beau and Gallant. 
It was, however, his graceful and 
handsome person, his accomplish- 
ments in the fine arts, including pro- 
ficiency in painting and drawing; his 



(29) 

piquant observations of surrounding 
men and tilings, his love of poetry, his 
taste for letters, his delicacy of senti- 
ment, playfulness of imagination and 
ease of style, betokening native re- 
finement and high culture, rather than 
military genius or achievement, 
which won for him his rank and pop- 
ularity. When that famous social 
function, which Howe's oflacers de- 
signed to mark his departure and to 
rebuke his recall, was projected, An- 
dre's talents of another than military 
culture came into full play, and were 
given free exercise. At a time when 
the marches of the American army 
might be traced through winter snows 
by prints of bleeding feet, and shiver- 
ing soldiers shaped the logs from off 
the hills of Valley Forge into rude 
cabins, Andre was drawing and cut- 
ting silhouettes for the Tory belles 
of Philadelphia society. He was 
writing album verses to light-headed 
girls like Becky Redman, who, in 
words to a German air, he celebrated 
as "Delia," after the sentimental 
fashion of a period when literature 
was rather lackadaisical than mar- 
tial, and when plain Mary Ann and 
Sallie Jane were always transformed 
into Chloe and Phyllis. Listen to 
him: 

" Return enraptured Hours 
When Delia's heart was mine 
When she with wreath of Flowers 
My Temples would entwine, 
When Jealousy nor love 
Corroded in my Brest 
But Visions light as Air 
Presided o'er my Rest. 
Now nightly 'round my Bed 
No airy visions play 
No flowers crown my head 
Each vernal holyday. 
For far from these sad plains 
My lovely Delia flies 
And racked with jealous pains 
Her wretched Lover dies." 

There is another version of these lines, 
entitled "Major Andre's Lament," being 
an adaptation of what I have read, with 
some interpolations, the whole being 
made to appear as if written by Andre 
after his capture and before his execu- 
tion. This is a manifest misrepresenta- 
tion, as when he wrote the original 
lines he had no reason to forebode his 
later tragic fate. 



(30) 

The "Meschianza." 

From the time, New Year, 1777, he 
composed these lines — which I may 
not have deciphered with entire accu- 
racy from a manuscript — until the 
great festival of the Meschianza, of 
which he was at once leader, artist and 
historian, Andre seems to have been 
rather a carpet knight. To bis elabor- 
ate letter, written to a friend in Lon- 
don, and published years after his 
death, all the histories, notably Ban- 
croft's and Fiske's, owe their accounts 
of this gorgeous fete, which was a 
strange medley of modern parade and 
mediaeval tournament. The regatta, 
the procession, the tilting of the silk- 
clad knights of the Blended Rose and 
the Burning Mountain, the fireworks, 
the supper in a room two hundred feet 
long, forty feet wide and twenty-two 
feet high, where three hundred wax 
tapers were reflected in fifty-six pier 
glasses and four hundred and thirty 
covers were laid and the guests were 
served by ebony-colored waiters, robed 
in Oriental costumes — all formed a be- 
fitting climax to the demoralizing 
career of Howe in Philadelphia, mark- 
ed by every phase of dissipation. That 
Andre shone with undiminished popu- 
larity was attested by the Chew girls, 
and the Shippens, the Whites and 
Craigs, the Redmans and Burds, who 
graced that fairy festal day, and one of 
whom fervently declared that the beau 
of the occasion next most fascinating 
to Andre was his own brother, a Brit- 
ish Lieutenant, nineteen years of age. 

It is a far cry from leading the cotil- 
lion to dying on the scaffold. Perhaps 
Andre may have felt that his rise to be 
the Adjutant General of the Army in 
North America four ye"ars after his 
capture in Canada was undeserved; he 
may have aspired to some bold stroke 
that would give success to his cause 
and merited fame to himself; perhaps 
intimate associations with the Tory 
families in Philadelphia with whom 
Arnold was closely related made him 
the most valuable medium of commu- 
nication in the development of the ill- 



(31) 

fated plot to betray the cause of 
American liberty. It is not within the 
scope of this paper to recall how that 
scheme happily miscarried, nor to re- 
vive the recriminations which have 
grown out of the discussion of Andre's 
conduct, his trial, his sentence and its 
execution. It need only be noticed that 
he met his fate with a grace and dig- 
nity, courtliness and courage that 
seemed to have never failed him. Of 
him it might well be said as of the 
royal English martyr: 

"He nothing common did, or mean. 
Upon that memorable scene." 

It is almost impossible to realize 
how one so closely connected with a 
crime as base as Arnold's and so tre- 
mendous in its possible consequences 
could have excited such universal 
sympathy on both sides of the ocean 
as were called out for Andre. The 
Board of High OflBcers that unani- 
mously condemned him to death show- 
ed him every mark of indulgence, and 
required him to answer no interroga- 
tory which could even embarrass his 
feelings. He acknowledged their gen- 
erosity in the strongest terms of manly 
gratitude, and afterwards remarked to 
one who visited him, that if there 
were any remains in his mind of 
prejudice against the Americans, his 
present experience must obliterate 
them. 

Bancroft rightfully says, however, 
that it was a blemish on his character 
that he was willing to prostitute a 
flag, even under the orders of his chief, 
for the innocence and private nature of 
his design, and to have made the lives 
of faultless prisoners hostages for uiS 
own, and, while his King did right to 
pension his mother and sisters and 
bestow rank upon his brother, he was 
not right "in raising a memorial to his 
name in "Westminster Abbey. Such 
honor belongs to other enterprises and 
deeds. The tablet has no fit place in 
a sanctuary, dear from its monuments 
to every friend of genius and man- 
kind." And in this view not only John 
Fiske, our own most philosophical 
historian, but Massey, the considerate 
English writer, concurs. 



(32) 

Met Death With Dignity. 

His execution was conducted with 
much dignity and deliberation and in 
full view not only of many of the 
regiments, but of a great multitude of 
people, who came to see him die. The 
officers of the American army, on 
horseback, with General Greene at 
their head, were formed in line on the 
road, Washington, however, delicately 
absenting himself. To those whom 
Andre knew, particularly to the Board 
of Officers who had pronounced on his 
fate, it is related that he "paid the 
salute of the hat and received their 
adleux with ease and complacency." 
Notwithstanding the patriotic feeling 
of the people, who would have torn 
Arnold limb from limb, they were 
weeping over Andre. General Steuben, 
who had helped to convict him, said: 
"Would to God the wretch who has 
drawn him to his death might be made 
to suffer In his stead." Some of the 
doggerel of the day ran: 

"Andre was generous, true and brave, 
In his room he buys a knave." 

A homely ballad of the day, restored 
by Professor Tyler, has, he says, "a 
robust compassion and an unshrinking 
honesty of praise to be expected only 
in an utterance so fearless as a genuine 
street-song:" 

"When he was executed, 

He looked both meek and mild; 
He looked upon the people, 

And pleasantly he smiled. 
It moved each eye witli pity, 

Caused every heart to bleed; 
And every one wished him released — 

And Arnold in his stead. 
He was a man of honor, 

In Britain he was born; 
To die upon the gallows 

Most highly ho did scorn." 

When he came in view of the gibbet 
he involuntarily started backward and 
made a pause, but, recovering his com- 
posure, said to the officer by his side: 
"I am reconciled to my death, but I 
detest the mode." He stepped quickly 
into the elevated carriage with prompt- 
ness, and said: "It will be but a mo- 
mentary pang." With one handker- 



(33) 

chief the Marshal pinioned his arms, 
and, with the other, Andre, taking off 
his hat and stock, and, with perfect 
composure, bandaged his own eyes, 
which were among the very few in that 
throng not moistened. He slipped the 
noose over his own head, adjusted it 
without the assistance of the execu- 
tioner, which office, tradition has it, 
no patriot would fill, and for which 
there had to be secured one of the 
half-way loyalist breed, who blackened 
his face and disguised himself, so that 
he could never be recognized. Before 
the end Andre raised the handkerchief 
from his eyes and said: "I pray you to 
bear me witness that I meet my fate 
like a brave man." 

In that moment which elapsed after 
he had replaced the bandage over his 
eyes and before the wagon was driven 
off, I like to think that he had fast 
fleeting glimpses of the panorama of 
his short life; and that at the very end 
of them his thoughts went 
back and lingered last with 
that quiet English rural scene 
— the slender, sloping church 
spire, and the fragrant hedge rows, 
and the green garden and the rude 
rose-covered gate — which he had de- 
picted on North Lime street for his 
young friend, John Cope, when he 
would have wooed him to the sweet 
shades of the English home where he 
had lived and which he loved, and now 
forever lost. 



(31) 

Andre's Letter to Washington. 
The following appeal, to which no 
reply was ever made, was written by 
Andre to Washington on the day pre- 
vious to his execution. Henry Cabot 
Lodge says: "The fact that no reply 
was sent is condoned by the statement 
that Washington, finding it impossible 
to grant the request, did not wish to 
wound Andre's feelings by a positive 
refusal; preferring to leave to him 
until the last moment the consoling 
hope that his wish might possibly be 
granted." 

Taapan, the 1st October, 1780. 
Sir,— 

Buoy'd above the Terror of Death 
by the Consciousness of a Life de- 
voted to honourable pursuits, and 
stained with no action that can give 
me Remorse, I trust the request I 
make to your Excellency at this seri- 
ous period, and which is to soften my 
last moments, will not be rejected. 

Sympathy towards a Soldier will 
surely induce your Excellency and the 
military Tribunal to adapt the mode 
of my death to the feelings of a man 
of honor. 

Let me hope, Sir, that if aught in 
my character impresses you with es- 
teem towards me, if aught in my mis- 
fortunes marks me as the victim of 
policy, and not of resentment, I shall 
experience the Operation of these 
Feelings in your Breast by being in- 
formed that I am not to die on a 
Gibbet. 

I have the honour to be 
Your Excellency's 
Most obedient and 

Most humble Servant, 

JOHN ANDRE, 
Adj. Gen. to the British Army. 



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